What do you do all day?

One of the questions we are asked occasionally is "What do you do all day?" This comes from folks who envision us sitting around reading books and eating bonbons. I'll admit, there is a fair amount of reading books, but the daily details of life ashore are magnified greatly when you live on a boat. For example, just planning and executing the grocery shopping can be quite an adventure on a boat.

The first thing you take into consideration in menu planning is that there are only two burners on the stove and they are pretty close together. You can get a small sauce pan and a saute pan on the stove at the same time, but two saute pans or a dutch oven and a saute pan aren't going to fit. So one factor in meal planning is how many and what size pans are needed. We use the grill on the stern of the boat whenever possible.

Then there is the "carry everything" factor. When we don't have our car, as we haven't had for the last three weeks, everything we buy at the grocery store has to be carried to the boat. We can each handle two boat bags, but I have to be judicious in what I plan to buy, considering both the bulk and the weight.

Finally there is the issue of how long it takes to get to and from a grocery store. In Annapolis going to the grocery store involved getting the water taxi from the boat to the shore, walking a half a mile to the bus stop, taking a 30 minute bus ride to the grocery store, and then reversing the process to get home. Buying a week's worth of groceries consumed nearly five hours by the time you added the wait time for the buses.